Grossly unfair, unreliable, biased, and pretty much delusional rants and ravings on Lisp from a simple working application programmer.

Monday, February 11, 2008

What the Hell is a Fortune Cookie File Anyway?

Just to get strangers up to speed quickly on your correspondent, here is what other people say I said, according to their sigs:

%I think it would be harder for a good programmer to change editors than to change languages.%Parentheses? What parentheses? I haven't noticed any parenthesessince my first month of Lisp programming. I like to ask people whocomplain about parentheses in Lisp if they are bothered by all thespaces between words in a newspaper...%Lisp gives you a kazillion ways to solve a problem.(1- kazillion) of them are wrong.%My dream of a Cells consulting business is fading as user after userturns out to be hindered not at all by my deliberate withholdingof documentation.%Lisp nearing the age of fifty is the most modern language out there. GC, dynamic, reflective, the best OO model extant including GFs, procedural macros, and the only thing old-fashioned about it is that it is compiled and fast.%Eight years to do TeX? How smart can [Knuth] be? He should have used Lisp.%[This one apparently stopped the quoter from trying Lisp. The quoter suspected irony but finally decided I was serious.]Yeah, I'm a gifted guru. Since you called me that, I guess I'll talk to you a little bit.%There are no average Lisp programmers. We are the Priesthood. Offerings of incense or cash will do.%I suppose if what you said had any merit it would occasion hostility.%Yeah, what the hell can anyone accomplish with beauty and power? (in response to a linked blog entry saying Lisp was beautiful and powerful but unuseable)%No, you are an asshole doing his best to despoil c.l.l, and I am anasshole doing his best to hose out your crap.%Liars need good memories, trolls need NG readers with bad ones.%We all need early warning systems for "they might have heard this a million times before". I once destroyed any nano-chance I had with a stunning, taller woman by asking her how tall she was."Six foot two," she replied. "How short are you?"%Programmers who lock onto a design decision and cling to it in the face of contradictory new information -- well, that's almost everyone in my experience, so I better not say what I think of them or people will start saying bad things about me on c.l.l.%This reminds me of the NYC cabby who accepted a fare to Chicago. When they got there and could not find the friend who was supposed to pay the fare the cabby just laughed and said he should have known.%> Actually, I believe that Aikido, Jazz and Lisp are different appearances of the same thing.Yes, the Tao. /Everything/ is a different appearance of the tao.---"Ken, I went to the library and read up on Buddhism, and believe me, you are no Buddhist."-- Kenny's Mom%That absolutely terrifies the herd-following, lockstep-marching, mainstream-saluting cowards who obediently dash out to scoop up books on The Latest Thing. They learn and use atrocities like Java, C++, XML, and even Python for the security it gives them and then sit there slaving away miserably, tediously, joylessly paying off mortgages and supporting ungrateful teenagers who despise them, only to look out the double-sealed thermo-pane windows of their central-heated, sound-proofed, dead-bolted, suffocating little nests into the howling gale thinking "what do they know that I do not know?" when they see us under a lean-to hunched over our laptops to shield them from the rain laughing our asses off as we write great code between bong hits.... what was the question?%Shut up! (That last phrase has four or more syllables if pronounced as intended.)%Nonsense. You'll be using it for the GUI, not protein-folding.(in response to a comment that LTk was slow)%Continuations certainly are clever, but if we learned anything from the rejection of the cover art for "Smell the Glove", it is that "there is a fine line between stupid... and clever".%Ah, there's no place like academia for dispassionate, intellectually honest discussion of new ideas on their merits. Thank god for tenure giving your bold antagonist the protection they needed to shout down your iconoclastic..... hang on...%Whoever objected must be in my killfile, ...%From memory (but I think I have it right): "But Jesus said, Suffer captured variables, and forbid them not to come unto thine macro bodies, for of such are DSLs made." Can I get an Amen?%Awareness of defect is the first step to recovery.%You made a bad analogy (there are no good ones, but you found a new low) ...%Yes, it is true that Kent Pitman was raised by a closet full of Lisp Machines, but the exception only proves the rule. (in a postscript after positing that computer languages are not learned in infancy)%I suggest you try bartender's school to support yourself, start programming for fun again.(responding to a comment that 98% of anything to dowith computers was not interesting code)%I could add four lanes to my carpal tunnel and still not write all the code I am dying to write.%Neutrality? I want to bury other languages, not have a gateway to them.%Ken: "Cute puppy. Did you get it for companionship or to pick up chicks?"Simon: "Hunh? My puppy /always/ gives me companionship."(on how he was understood by a native English speaker)%> Yeah. In case you guys didn't quite get it, this particular site> targets (among other things) the Turkish lisp effort. Yours truly and> others have also been accused of being destructive to Turkish youthThey want you to copy them first?%You can lead a horse away from water, but if it wants to drink youbetter have a big frickin stun gun. No, I have no idea what I just said.%PWUIAHAHAHAHA. This is Lisp. We never use anyone else's code. Hell, most of us won't even use Lisp, insist on creating our own with C.%OK, who is going to head over to c.l.python and suggest parentheses instead of whitespace? It could be a pretty funny post. "Hey, guys! I was looking at Lisp, had this great idea...keep an open mind!"%Educational software itself is now an acknowledged joke precisely because of people who try to foist on others "Oh, look, we used a computer, it must be in-frickin-credible".%Horse. Cart. Please note order.%Start this thread again. Change the subject to "Lisp Sucks! Molasses is faster!!" and post the code and some timings and the whole community will be working for you for free.%We live here. Every week we see noobs stumble in the door, trip over the upturned rug, bang their heads on the too-low hanging lamp, and then ease into Lisp pretty easily after being pointed to Lisp-aware editors, Slime, PCL, etc etc directed by living Lisp Gods, dynamic and interactive, not some two-dimensional billboard of an FAQ that just raises more questions.%Are you looking for that "friends" stuff from C++ (if I have that right, unless it was Java ). This is Lisp, we just shoot from the hip.%You people do not listen to me on AllegroCL, you do not listen to me on Cells, why am I not surprised you do not listen to me on the tao?%Two prehensile toes up!-- reporting on behalf of his development team their review of Peter Seibel's "Practical Common Lisp"%Pearls. Swine. Please note order.%> I think it's a fairly large assumption that this problem is soluble...If not work on it should be suspended.%This will be a commercial "Hello World" app that displays "Hello", asks you to login or buy, then displays "world". More soon.%> Callbacks are a form of continuation.Yes, in the same sense that a shoe is a form of aircraft carrier.%Lisp is no longer the crazy aunt in the attic, she is now out in the front parlor where her admirers come to pay homage and learn at her feet.%> fred gilham wrote:>> kenny tilton wrote:>>> fred gilham wrote:>>> Become a celebrity like Kenny Tilton.>> I am a simple Lisp programmer.>> -->> "I am a simple Buddhist monk. ">> -- Tenzin Gyatso, the Fourteenth Dalai Lama> On top of everything else, humble too! :-)%